[Trigger warning for child abuse denialism]I promised in my earlier article on Stephen Baskerville's Faith & Reason lecture that I would devote more attention to his views on child abuse. Here I am, ready to fulfill that promise! To summarize Baskerville: First, mothers are the true abusers and it is removing the father from the home that is the real cause of child abuse. Second, child protective services exists to take children from innocent heterosexual families and sell them off to … [Read more...]

[Trigger warning for rape, assault, and sexual harassment denialism]This past Friday, Stephen Baskerville delivered Patrick Henry College's annual (and mandatory) Faith & Reason lecture (you can read the full text here). Baskerville has been a professor of government at Patrick Henry College since 2007. Patrick Henry College, as you may remember if you are a regular reader, was founded by Michael Farris (founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association). Farris' desire was to educate a … [Read more...]

A Guest Post by TimOriginally posted on Wine and MarbleTim blogs at Good and LostI have been avoiding this all day. All week. In one way or another, I’ve been avoiding this all my life.Some of you may think you know me, but you don’t, not really. You know a version of me, meticulously maintained, that I’ve spent my life pretending to be. And I am afraid — so very afraid — that if I let that image fall, you won’t like what you see. I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me, that you’ll think I … [Read more...]

Both yesterday and today, I have come upon an ever-growing stream of responses to the viral blog post, FYI (if you're a teenage girl). Some of them were so good I just couldn't leave them be without sharing them. So here, in this post, I'm going to offer a roundup of responses of sorts. Feel free to post additional responses you've come across in the comments, and I may add them here.First, of course, is my own post, FYI (A letter to my daughter Sally): Dear Sally,I saw something today … [Read more...]

"I want you to know that I never actually believed everything in those Above Rubies magazines," my mom told me when I was visiting home a while back."Then why didn't you tell us that, mom?" I asked. "I read every issue of that magazine cover to cover, and I always thought it was completely approved material."I don't know why my mother made that admission to me when she did. It was before the Mother Jones article about Kathryn Joyce's new book on evangelical adoption, which sheds light on … [Read more...]

I recently read a post by Lana that made me think about everyone I left behind when I left my conservative evangelical patriarchal homeschool upbringing. With all the [ex] conservative homeschooler blogs out there nowadays, people may be under the impression that homeschool fundamentalism has virtually disappeared among homeschool alumni. To be sure, this Christian movement among homeschool graduates is dying a very slow and painful death. But it is so far from over, and I have so many friends … [Read more...]

One argument against women voting that I didn't mention in my recent post on the subject is that women lean left. The blog post I responded to mentioned that here: Based on the Bible, it is wrong for women to exercise authority over men. However, women voting can lead to a passing of laws that the majority of men would oppose. One example of this is abortion – more than 50% of men are against it, but more than 50% of women are for it, which is why it is legal. Interestingly enough, abortion is … [Read more...]